Motorists Driving Away Their Bad Habits : High-Performance Schools Providing Hands-On Training to Improve Skills
It is unbelievable how poorly most people drive, says Bertil Roos, a former race car driver from Sweden. They have no feel for cars, no understanding of how they work and--since they don’t know what they are doing wrong--they keep doing it over and over again.
There is driver’s education in high school and there are commercial schools, but they have limitations on what they can teach. However, for motorists who want to learn more about driving and want to take their safety into their own hands, there are about half a dozen high-performance driving schools scattered throughout the country, including one operated by Roos, that can provide hands-on training in such areas as braking and skid control.
At his School of High Performance Driving in Blakeslee, Roos teaches some courses for people who want to race, but there also are two less expensive courses aimed at people who simply want to become safer, everyday drivers.
The two-day European Highway Driving course costs $595 and concentrates on the problems of winter driving. Roos says driving on ice and snow requires an extraordinary smoothness that makes an excellent year-round driver.
Roos also offers the two-day high-performance driving course, which costs $695 and covers the same thing, but with some higher speeds.
On a recent Monday morning, Roos was addressing 10 people who signed up for the high-performance school.
“The problem is you have spent too many years practicing bad habits,” he said, beginning the first of half a dozen classroom sessions that will alternate with often-humbling activities on the adjacent race track.
One of the big problems for many drivers is that they do not use their eyes properly, says Roos. “The average driver detects a problem too late for even an expert to handle.”
Roos suggests a multifaceted technique he calls “autopilot.” One of the main points is making certain that the car is headed in the right direction, freezing your hands on the wheel, then briefly looking ahead or around you for possible problems. Good driving should be a constant repetition of that.
“You must learn how to use your eyes. If you can’t release your eyes, you never are going to see other things when you need them,” Roos said.
When getting ready to turn, the driver should use the autopilot to look into the corner and check for any problems and to look where he wants to go in order to place the car there.
It sounds a little odd, but the idea is to look where you want to go and then drive there, instead of staring at the nose of the car and trying to guide it that way. You let your peripheral vision handle the details such as what is happening on both sides of you and where the car is placed on the road.
Another key element of the autopilot is never look where you don’t want to go. What Roos means is that by staring at a threatening object, such as a telephone pole or other obstruction, one is guaranteed to hit it.
In an emergency, the class learns not to look at the “bad places” and instead look where they want to go and automatically maneuver the car to get there.
Another of Roos’ major themes is that driving should be a smooth operation to avoid upsetting the car’s handling.
“We should drive just like we have a glass of water on the dashboard,” said Roos. The idea is to make sure that as much of the tires as possible are in contact with the road all of the time.
An abrupt use of the brakes causes the weight of the car to shift rapidly. Instead of the weight being spread fairly evenly over four tires, hard braking shifts the weight to the front of the car, causing the nose to dive.
At the same time, the rear of the car becomes lighter and much of the pressure keeping the rear tires in firm contact with the road is lost, leading to fishtailing.
The key is to begin braking early, so that one never has to use more than 20% of the car’s braking capability, Roos explains. The braking is long and steady.
The 20% braking should begin well before any turn and should continue until the driver is certain that the turn can be negotiated safely. Then, the driver eases up gently on the brakes and gently applies the gas. One advantage of even, gentle braking is that it causes the car to hunker down on its suspension, increasing the pressure of the tires against the road and improving the grip.
A key element of Roos’ doctrine of braking is what he calls “brake alert.” In short, that means that as soon as one senses the possibility of a problem, the foot should be on the brake. The driver does not brake, but he should be putting a slight pressure on the pedal, just enough to take out the slack.
